Friday, September 2, 2011

The movie I'm most excited about seeing this fall is...


Yes, this Michael Lewis book was made into a movie, with protagonist getting the mega-movie-star treatment with Brad Pitt assuming the role of still-current Oakland A's manager Billy Beane.  I'm sure Mr. Beane is quite pleased with the appearance upgrade ;)

In any event, I read Moneyball a couple of years or so ago and it is a very interesting book, whether you are a baseball person or a numbers/math person, as the premise involves the use of statistical analysis of a baseball player's historical statistics to extrapolate how well he will perform in the future.  And then, applying those findings to acquiring undervalued players overlooked by the marketplace.  So, I guess there's some economics theory in there as well.  This is known by baseball supernerds as Sabermetrics.  And, as Beane and his A's demonstrated (and Moneyball documented), it worked.  It worked famously.  That is, until the baseball world, which had initially resisted, if not outright vehemently rejected, Beane's methods, came around and started employing some of the same mathetmatial ideologies promoted by sabermatricians, such as Bill James, which evened out the playing field, so-to-speak.  Just ask the Boston Red Sox how that worked out for them :)

So, I plan on enjoying Moneyball, the movie.  I hope it is as good as the book.  Here's the trailer:

No comments:

Post a Comment